


What a Living World Will Demand

by suchakidder



Series: Daemon AU [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Daemon Separation, M/M, Original Character(s), Paranoia, the original characters being each character's daemon, this is where it starts to diverge from canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchakidder/pseuds/suchakidder
Summary: After surviving the attack on the Archives by Prentiss and his accidental separation in the tunnels, Jon tries to settle into the role of the Archivist, now with the added responsibility of figuring out which of his co-workers killed Gertrude Robinson.Season 2 (and 3, probably) of TMA but with daemons.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Daemon AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061879
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	What a Living World Will Demand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman or seen the show on HBO, here's a little primer for you on [what a daemon is ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_\(His_Dark_Materials\))
> 
> This takes place in the last chapter of [ This is The Forest Primeval ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26624674/chapters/64920994), so you should check that out first. This fic will contain spoilers for the first episode of season two, as well as season three.

First is Tim. Charming, carefree Tim, so bloody-minded when it came to engaging with Jon, always with a joke or clever innuendo. Discretion wasn’t a word Jon would ever use for Marisha, but she had been well, _kind_ to Octavia, back when they’d all worked in the open pin in Research. Boundlessly curious about her, Marisha had still been respectful of Octavia’s privacy. 

Tim, who had found the tunnels first. Tim’s who’s got an angry streak. Almost always light, something they could laugh about in Research. They’d make a game out of it, see how many times they could rile Tim and/or Marisha up in a day, whether it was Sasha recounting unsafe methods in Artefact Storage or Claire who was raised in Massachusetts talking about American healthcare. The record had been six outburst, Jon thinks, Maybe seven.

Tim was just as quickly to diffuse as he was to build up, but Marisha was harder, stubbornly holding onto her anger even once Tim was back to smiles and laughter. Robin would call her a howler monkey, just to set her off again, but she always eventually came around. Their anger was just passion, justified outrage, never murderous. Tim would never hurt someone, right?

Tim and Marisha are angry when he gets to the visitor area. Jon and Octavia aren’t restricted to the ward— nothing is restricted, his doctors have said they are free to roam the public areas of the hospital, they just can’t leave before the observational period is over— but Jon remembers the visitor area from when he was first here, over twenty years ago. The whole left wall is a panel of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Thames and the city. When he was eight, he had been so engrossed in the cityscape it’d taken a firm grip on his shoulder from his grandmother to get his attention when the nurse called for him to head back into the ward for testing. Now, as a London resident, Jon doubts he would be able to name even half the buildings he’d catalogued as a child, but that’s not what’s caught his attention. 

From this height, Jon can see all the way to Milbank, the tower rising out from the trees that line the embankment, pedestrians crossing Vauxhall. The Institute isn’t tall enough to be visible, but Jon is looking for a sign— blinking blue light, sirens, something— when Tim stomps up and sets a paper bag down heavily on a chair.

“Were you— “ and he’s got one accusatory fingers nearly against Jon’s sternum— “really not going to mention anything about your daemon?”

Hiding the separation had been as fruitless as hiding Octavia’s settling had been, but Jon is provenly not the best with decisions in a crisis. Besides, it really _wasn’t_ any more of an issue than the worms. Jon tries to say as much, but Tim stops him before he can more than the first word out.

“Don’t you say it’s fine! This is easily the most fucked up thing that’s happened to any of us.” 

“Worse than Michael knives-for-fingers approaching Sasha?” Jon tries weakly.

Tim is not amused. Marisha won’t even look at them. Like a cat, she is very pointedly sitting with her back to them. 

“You should have told me. I would have helped.”

It’s not that Jon meant to hide it. He’d collapsed, same as Evangeline, leaving only Tim and Marisha to fend off the worm wave. When they survived that and Jon felt… not better, but able to walk at least, survival had been the immediate concern.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Jon says.

“I should have known, though,” Tim says. Still avoiding eye contact with Jon or Octavia, Marisha softly mutters and tugs on Tim’s sleeve until he picks her up. “I know that since the Archives Octavia’s been… Well, she’s quiet but she’s not _that_ quiet.”

“Again, there’s nothing you could have done.”

“You need to take better care of yourself.” It’s hard, actual anger, in Tim’s eyes, and the brief look Marisha gives them is equally firm.

Jon swallows. “Alright.”

That’s enough, Tim sits down next to the bag he’s brought over from the Archives, while Marisha tentatively approaches Octavia. Jon goes through the bag— no laptop, like he’d asked for and a cardigan that is decidedly not his. A dissapointment, but there’s one silver lining at the bottom of the bag,

Tim groans when he sees Jon’s hand resurface with the tape recorder. 

“No please, Jon. You’re literally in the hospital, and I’m— ” he gestures to the plasters all up and down his body, twin injuries to Jon’s. 

“It’ll be brief. Just…” Just, what you know, what you saw. Did you know about Gertrude? Did you see anything, see her, in the tunnels? What do you _know_? “... a brief account of today’s events. What we didn’t already get on tape.”

Tim isn’t a completionist, isn’t as dedicated to getting down any and every piece of relative information down into some sort of preservable account, so Jon tries a different tactic.

“What if I said it would help my healing process?”

“That’s a lie,” Marisha hisses, but Tim quiets her with a gesture thrown her way. 

“Fine,” he grumbles. “So, I could tell something was wrong as soon as I got back from lunch…”

***

Actually, Elias is the first, but he refuses to come to the hospital or even give a phone statement.

“Gertrude is dead.” It had been the first thing Octavia had said to him, their reunion turned ice cold with those three words whispered into his ear while they were wheeled out of the institute.

“Hello, Jon,” Elias responds magnanimously. “Aren’t you in an ambulance to St. Thomas right now?”

The paramedic riding in the back with him has politely turned away to let Jon have his conversation in peace, but her ferret daemon is not doing as well as job at hiding his interest as his ears twitch each time they speak. 

“Is it true Gertrude Robinson was found dead in the tunnels?” Jon asks. 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s not official yet. We’re still waiting on the clearance from the ECDC to begin police investigation into these apparent tunnels. It would be inappropriate to confirm--”

“Elias, please,”

“Yes, if Martin — who climbed out of the tunnels with _your_ daemon — is correct, Gertrude Robinson’s body was found in a small room under the Institute.” The long sigh after his words discloses how much he trusts Martin’s assessment. “How he could properly identify a body that has been supposedly dead for months is— “

“How?”

“Jon, do I need to remind you, you are suffering from a traumatic conscience injury. When you break a bone and it pierces through the skin, that is called a compound fracture and has to be observed for infection for days in the hospital. You have — you and Martin — a compound fracture in your psyche.”

Both the paramedic and her daemon wince at this, a seemingly involuntary reaction Jon has seen plenty of since he emerged from the tunnels. The ferret runs up his human’s torso until he’s wrapped across her neck like a scarf. Jon doesn’t begrudge them the display, as inconsiderate as it might be. The reminder that a daemon bond, as accepted and absolute as gravity or mathematics, can be broken is never easy to face. He's just thankful the separation the paramedics had to contend with is simple and already solved; Octavia and Jon have been reunited. What Jon and Octavia witnessed two decades ago has hung with them every day since.

“We’re fine,” Jon says, and Octavia, on his shoulder, echoes the sentiment softly, but loudly enough to be heard over the line. “What happened? You said Gertrude ‘died in the line of duty’. What does that even mean?”

There is another sigh from the other side of the line and then the tapping of footsteps; once Elias is away from the soft murmuring of voices he tells Jon a short and lacking account of the events of March 15th. No amount of prompting gets Elias to budge on the facts he’s willing to share— there was blood all over her desk, more than any human could survive losing, and no trace of Gertrude or Hannibal. 

“Alright, well thank you.” Jon says. All he can think of is the small stain on the hardwood floor, slightly bigger than his hand, that he noted a few days after he’d taken up occupancy in the office. 

The rest of the ride to St. Thomas is quiet.

***

After Tim leaves, Jon is called back to the visitor’s area not even fifteen minutes later and when he enters, there is a woman standing in front of the windows. Jon knows he knows her, but nothing about her looks familiar— curly ginger hair, pale skin, a toothy smile, a chameleon daemon held delicately in her palm— but she feels familiar in a way he can’t place. And then she begins to speak.

“Oh Jon, I want you to know I feel just terrible about you and Octavia,” Sasha says as he approaches. “I feel like an arse that I got out with just a few holes in my arm.”

“Right,” Jon says and without anything else to say, he holds up Octavia like it’s visual proof they’re just fine. Octavia, not one to be proffered like a show and tell prop, leaves a trail of web along his arm as she scuttles back up to his shoulder. 

“How are you?”

Jon’s tempted to point to Octavia again. More than anything, he’s still suffering shock or some lingering respiratory acidosis, especially if he could momentarily forget what Sasha had looked like. 

Sasha had been his closest friend in research. She was always easy-going and amiable in a way that reminded him of Georgie at times, and not at all at other times. Sasha could make a better work-life distinction than Jon— actually had a life to distinguish work from— but could just as easily get lost on a research rabbit hole if something caught her interest. Aside from Jackson, Robin was easily the daemon Octavia had spoken to the most in their life. 

Jon had no reason to question anything in her statement, but the fact remained that no one could corroborate her interactions with the being that called itself Michael, nor seeing Timothy Hodge and learning how to kill the worms. She had worked with Gertrude a time or two; knew her better than any of the other archival staff. When he, Tim, and Sasha made the move down to the Archives, he’d thought that familiarity might be a boon, but Sasha had been just as perturbed at the mess of organization as them, just as in the dark. If that could be believed.

“Can you wait here?” Jon asks, knowing the answer he’ll receive. 

When he returns, she’s taken a seat and the sun is setting on London behind her. Her reaction when she sees the tape recorder in Jon’s hands is much like Tim’s— a long, disparaging groan.

“Really Jon? Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. What do you want to know?”

***

The thing with Martin is, Jon really doesn’t feel like he would have had anything to do with Gertrude’s murder. He knows, realistically, neither Sasha, Tim, or Elias, are guilty as well, but he doesn’t _feel_ that way. When he thinks of his other co-workers, it's with doubt and uncertainty. Any time Jon turns his mind towards Martin, it’s surety and that blasted fondness Jon felt when he swept the cobweb from his hair. Jon still seeks him out for a statement as soon as he can.

It had been after dinner by the time Jon had a chance to find Martin’s room— two doors down from him— and into the evening by the time Martin finishes with all the details of his time in the tunnels. Jon already knows parts of the story from Octavia, but she’d been in and out of consciousness, mostly contained inside Martin’s pocket. The reveal it was a gun, of all things, to bring down Gertrude Robinson only confirms the suspicion that’s already taken root deep in Jon. 

So that’s everyone. Without asking outright for alibis on the day of March 15th, Jon has gotten as much information as he can from his co-workers and Elias. There’s the rest of the staff to consider, but Jon can only focus on so much. 

There is one more consideration.

“Do you think the police have started searching the tunnels yet?” Octavia asks once they’re alone again in their room. Jon is quite happy it’s single occupancy.

“I think the real question is would Elias tell us if we called at— ” he checks his phone “— 10:30 at night?”

“It is a Friday,” Octavia points out, though after the day they’ve had Jon cannot imagine any Institute worker would be having any sort of a wild Friday night. Unless it was the type of wild that involved turning off your phone and drinking until you couldn’t remember your own name. There is probably a pub in Clapham hosting a smashed Tim currently, maybe even Sasha, though it would be hard even for Tim’s charms to persuade her out after the bone-tiredness Jon had seen in her during their brief visit.

“It would be easier if I could guide them too. I know I could retrace the route,” Octavia mumbles for what must be at least the fifth time that night. There’s a restless energy at being made to wait in a hospital while the tunnels are cleaned and searched, especially as Jon knows they’d have an easier time of it. Jon had made it very clear to Elias that Octavia had left a trail of web, but he’s unsure if Elias actually headed their advice or even passed it onto the police. 

“I know.”

Octavia’s crept to the window again, a different view than from the visitor center, though she’s still turned her eyes eastward. The city is now just hundreds of twinkling lights in the summer evening, and until Octavia moves, he can hardly make her out from the darkness of the night. 

All those years ago, when Mr. Spider’s door had opened, it wasn’t just darkness it revealed. Thin strands of web streamed out from the doorway, ensnaring the bully on the entryway, but not the daemon, in a form Jon has never remembered, held out in offering in the doomed young man’s hands. Jon had wrenched his eyes away, not to avoid the sight but to focus on a worse one. Octavia, a hissing tabby cat at his feet, had been similarly free of the web that covered Jon. There had been nothing that pulled her along towards the house but her connection with Jon and if the door hadn’t snapped shut after taking poor Thomas/Daniel/Michael’s daemon, Jon would have repaid that devotion by handing her over to Mr. Spider.

It’s haunted him the most over the years. The legs coming out of the doorway, his bully immobilized afterwards, never moving no matter how many times Jon looked back, his and Octavia’s life spared at the destruction of another— those are all terrifying as well, but not to the extent he’s reminded of his own failure every time he catches a glimpse of her form out of the corner of his eye or walks into a web he hadn’t noticed. 

All those years of waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it did, Jon didn’t offer Octavia to the darkness, she had crawled off into it ahead of him.

“I think I’m going to call it a night.” Jon settles into the hospital bed and thin coverlet, hardly comfortable but not the worst sleeping arrangement he’s found himself in by far. 

“Alright,” Octavia says, still at the window. 

In the last moments before sleep takes him, Jon sees a blur of darkness moving out of the corner of his eyes and realizes it’s the daemon bond that ties their sleep and unconsciousness. Neither of them will have to sleep when the other does if they don’t want to. 

The thought of Octavia, awake and watching him in the night, scares him more than it should, but he’s too far gone to try to fight against the exhaustion. He dreams of Carlos Vittery that night, thrashing and screaming as the web encased him, and when he wakes up in the early morning light, Octavia is asleep on the center of his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *trust nobody not even yourself.jpeg*
> 
> The title comes from Octavia Butler's _Parable of the Sower_. If you want a little reminder of everybody's deamon, here it is, with pictures this time!
> 
> Jon - [ black velvet tarantula ](https://www.mymonsters.co.za/product/tliltocatl-schroederi/) named Octavia after sci-fi and horror writer Octavia Butler. Their eyes are particular small and hard to see and I've already mentioned Octavia's eyes, so I imagine them more like wolf spider's eyes 
> 
> Martin - [ St. Bernard dog ](https://www.pets4homes.co.uk/images/breeds/68/large/875144fade5b5a6620ba6057695e3a24.jpg) named Evangeline before I'd come up with the naming convention of using horror writers/directors. She is the same form as Martin's dad's daemon. 
> 
> Sasha - [ a carrion crow ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Corvus_corone_-near_Canford_Cliffs%2C_Poole%2C_England-8.jpg) named Robin after Robin Hardy the director of the Wicker Man (the original 1973 one of course). Not!Sasha's daemon is a [ a chameleon ](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G1D447hT9ls/Tmh2QfZlJzI/AAAAAAAABD0/WahXYJNRQxU/s1600/Panther+chameleon+001.jpg). Chameleon's don't actually change color to camouflage/hide, but I feel like daemons don't really follow biological convention, but instead human understanding/stereotypes of animals.
> 
> Tim - [ a ring tailed lemur ](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney-animals/images/1/1d/Ring-tailed_Lemur_3478.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20171207204932) named Marisha after Marisha Pessl, writer of the modern horror novel _Night Film_
> 
> Melanie - [ a Aldabra tortoise ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Aldabra_Female_on_Curieuse.JPG/1200px-Aldabra_Female_on_Curieuse.JPG) named Mephistopheles "Flea" after the demon in Faust OR Mr. Mistoflees from _Cats_. I imagine he's quite large, but not quite full grown tortoise sized since that'd be nearly 300 pounds.
> 
> Basira - [ a scops owl ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Southern_white_faced_scops_owl.jpg/1200px-Southern_white_faced_scops_owl.jpg). We didn't get his name last time, but it's because I have no self control, it's Sufjan. Legendary figure in Islam history and of course, my favorite sad boi singer, Sufjan Stevens
> 
> Georgie - [ a red fox ](https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/assets/ugc/gallery/pwp_red_fox01.jpg) named Jackson after my favorite horror writer: Shirley Jackson.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [ suchakidder ](https://suchakidder.tumblr.com/)


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